Archive for the ‘Abstract’ Category

It is a few months off 4 years since I began this Thousand Sketches Project almost three years since I completed it in 2007. I have continued with less haste and perhaps less naÃ¯ve enthusiasm… ? on my art blog http://walterlogeman.com/art

While on the Thousand Sketches journey I visited Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey. “Keep Sketching” to find more of myself, was his advice. I think that is ongoing. I went into acrylics… but it is not possible for me while I have a life as a psychotherapist, work hard. It took a lot to give that a go for a while in 2008-9. Back to digital. And it is mostly abstract, circles & crosses, that is all that wants to be there. I do occasional flowers or mountains, but patterns. pattern and more shapes & textures will squeeze them right out.

One thing leads to another. One of the hopes I have as the project comes to a close is that I will have a sense of unity. Yet I shun that too, I want to honour all the inner pulls and to go in all directions. But that war is tiring and brutal at times. One strong direction for me that has emerged and that is promising as a unifier is earth. I do hills and plants and crosses that symbolise the sacred of the here-and-now of earth. That focus has emerged, and I am pleased to notice it, make a new category. During the life of the project I have applied a maxim: Enhance what emerges. So to build on the earth theme I looked at blogs and articles on sacred earth and sketched moments that appealed and found titles inspired by the musings.

I dreamt a woman artist had collaborated with two older men, one did the background the other some frame setting. The woman was to draw in a shark, or was it carp? This was about 20 years ago and she had never completed the project. The men were now dead and famous, the picture would be worth millions, so I encouraged her to add the fish! It is not too late. She did.

I have had more time doing PC backup stuff and fixing crap than sketching. I was thinking of the early novels, Richardson, all made up of letters, which became possible because of the speed-up of the postal system. The speedup led to the conception of letters forming a whole. In those epistolatory novels the letters themselves are part of the plot. OK, self reflective stuff. So this is a bit like that. So is the next one.